Meta Monday – CrownRoach

Welcome back, and as always, thanks for reading! We have an exciting topic for today’s Meta Monday that is a personal favorite: CrownRoach! As we took a couple weeks to try on some more tier oriented decks for this segment, we wanted to return to the original idea of “off meta” decks that are fun to ladder with.

Before I go into detail on that, Eternal players received some really great news last week about a new feature that debuts today – Sealed League! This is a super great new game mode that gives players a “sealed pool” of 8 packs to build a deck with, then gives a new pack every week to add to your deck. Entry is only 10k gold or 800 gems, which is a very reasonable price for a month long event, and the prize structure seems great. It is promising to see DWD doing cool events like this, and hopefully the trend continues.

The ETS resumed this past weekend, with the first tournament of this ETS season. We saw a pretty healthy representation of AP Mid at the event, with 8 players bringing it to the event, it was the most popular choice for the weekend. The second most represented deck in the tournament was FTP Moment. Unfortunately, the list did not perform very well, and no players made it into the top 8. I believe the list to still be a great ladder choice, however it seems to have been the wrong choice for the event. To the surprise of many, Chalice took down the event. Personally, I am big fan of TinMan and their playstyle, so I was very happy to see them perform well. However, as they addressed after they won, I expect to see an uptick in Chalice this week on ladder.

Here is a break down of the decks for the tournament (courtesy of Unearthly):

Argenport Midrange – 11.6% (8)

FTP Moment – 10.1% (7)

Xenan Midrange – 8.7% (6)

Elysian Midrange – 7.2% (5)

FPS Scream – 7.2% (5)

Icaria Blue – 7.2% (5)

Feln Control – 5.8% (4)

Praxis Midrange – 5.8% (4)

Skycrag Aggro – 4.3% (3)

FJS Removal Pile – 2.9% (2)

Hooru Flyers – 2.9% (2)

Other – 26.1% (18)

5F Strangers

Chalice Control

Combrei Aggro

FJS Armory

FPS Aggro

FPS Control

FPS Rogue

FTS Midrange

FTS Moment

Feln Midrange

Feln Scream

Grenadins

Stonescar Gunslingers

Stonescar Midrange

Stonescar Rogue

TJP Control

TJP Midrange

TPS Temporal Control

Overall, a very diverse event! Something interesting slid into the top 8 in the form of two different “Scream Reanimator” lists. ArmaNova brought the more classic, streamlined version of the deck, while NotoriousGHP had some really cool innovations to the archetype. The inclusion of both Bandit Queen, Vicious Highwayman and Champion of Fury make this list more of a “FPS Aggro” list with the ability to recur threats. The Scream package of Gorgon Fanatic, Haunting Scream and Dark Return make this deck incredibly resilient. I am super impressed with this list, and think it is a great choice for ladder, if you like playing any of the above listed cards. As the meta swings toward aggressive strategies, this deck is very capable of sprinting to the finish line or going the distance in the mid-long game.

On that note, it has been an interesting week on ladder. Being the end of the month, a lot of players are either in the Masters playground of lost jank, or trying to finish up the last few ranks to earn that sweet end of the month premium! Overall, between personal experience, spectating friend’s games and watching streams, I have noticed the meta shifting more aggressively. Now that the new season is upon us, a lot of players will hop back on their Oni Ronin‘s to grind their way up to Masters, so be prepared for that.

If you are looking to jank your way to the top, we have just the thing! CrownRoach has been a fun strategy for a long time, and I have seen a ton of interesting brews within the archetype. One of the more recent iterations that crushed me on ladder over the weekend was this bad boy. The list I played against has swapped out the Yetipult for Black-Sky Harbinger’s, but it was a HOUSE. They ended the game with 3 Mask of Torment‘s in play, activating them all, and swinging with a wall of 8/8’s (including a powered up Devoted Theurge). This list is notably lacking removal, so I believe you could swap out some number of Channel the Tempest for In Cold Blood, but otherwise the deck is gas and should be used to achieve maximum ladder shenanigans.

Our featured deck is a more classic approach to the archetype, looking to maximize the synergies between Second Sight, Twinning Ritual,Clockroach and Crown of Possibilities. These are your core combo pieces, and the dream looks like: turn 1 play Initiate of the Sands, drop a Crown turn 2, naturally draw a Clockroach turn 3 with a sweet new ability, Twinning Ritual it, then Second Sight the most keyworded copy to the top of your deck (ideally now with Lifesteal and Double Damage), since it now has Destiny, two copies pop off the top of your deck which draws you a Scorpion Wasp with echo and Equivocate to protect your life total. While that will almost never happen, you can still conjure up some pretty interesting board states very quickly. Bond is a keyword they just added to the Possibilities, and it can actually be great for loading up the board with Roaches. The deck leans fairly heavily on its namesake, Crown of Possibilities, but is able to grind just fine without it. Crown just makes the process a bit easier, can give things Killer, Deadly or Lifesteal, allowing the decision tree to be more clear. Clockroach combined with placing copies of itself back on the top of your deck is a perfectly viable win con in and of itself. Once you get to 6 power, you can just drop two increasingly larger threats per turn, which is enough to close out games. This list has some top end to ensure you can kill your opponent, in the form of Twinbrood Sauropod and Thunderstrike Dragon, both with echo to lend themselves to the deck’s synergies. Being only two faction, influence is easy to come by, so you can almost always drop them on time as needed. Equivocate helped patch up the tougher, more aggressive matchups quite nicely, and generally puts a worse card in the players hand. The addition of the “nerfed/buffed” Reliquary Raider adds a new dynamic to the deck. This card is really great for the deck, being able to draw cards, gain life, stonewall early aggression or eat a removal spell.

for Meta Monday – CrownRoach

Nice spotlight on crown, such a fun archetype for eternal. I would have liked more focus on darkroaches, because the deck feels much better than U/W. Dark Return is huge, Nesting Avisaur is poor, and Black sky and Ayan are huge on stabilizing. I also see many lists running 4x second sight, but feel like it’s much worse as a 4x than Twinning Ritual especially in the U/W lists that don’t have as many crests to prevent bricks.